Hanging Out with the Heroes
by Brandon Skyblade
Summary: After finishing the Normal Story chapters, my next course of action as tactician is to...get drawn into their world? A self-insert story of the shenanigans around the Zenith castle. Spoilers for it and my personal Support pairings!


**A/N: Welcome to this FE Heroes story! I'm also in the middle of an Awakening story, so you might see some pairing crossover between the two. As the description says, it's one of those "sucked into the game" kind of stories, but YOU are the tactician anyway! I will also warn that there is a lot of rambling in this chapter, partially to show how disorientating an event like this might actually be to someone. With that, enjoy!**

Chapter 1-1: Making an Entrance

Veronica had my best team pinned in the corner of the map. Just when we seemed to be finished, I threw out my ace in the hole: A Light's Blessing. My defeated partners had been revived, the conscious ones revitalized and everyone ready to unleash their special techniques to mop the floor with the spoiled princess.

STAGE CLEAR!

I grinned as I let the scene play out with the masked man teasing us once more, though I think I had a feeling who he was. As quickly as I won, it was back to the grind of my partners to take on other challenges this game had to offer. I was having quite a lot of fun with this game, and I'd get a chuckle or two out of new and old fans yelling at each other as someone that likes the whole series anyway. To snap myself out of that self-rambling, I saw I had at least 20 Orbs after rushing the final chapter. Hopefully, I get some new characters!

I decided to wait until the next banner rolled around for it to happen, since it was a couple minutes from 2 AM EST…yes, I've occasionally played games that late. I assumed I needed to restart the app to get extra data downloaded onto it, so I did just that. There were two new banners, but the second one looked blank. Maybe someone broke the graphic? But anyway, I got my five characters (Lissa, FINALLY, a healer I care about! Sorry, Wrys fans.) and look at the other one. There was only a 1 Orb cost for it for some reason, so I checked it out…then things got weird.

My phone's screen went completely white. I thought the game froze or something when I heard the sound of the summoning sequence still playing. They REALLY must have glitched up this banner, I thought. Then I hear the sound getting louder and louder as if those colored orbs from the animation were coming towards me instead of away from me. Then the screen filled with light blue lines like the runes of the summoning gate. Then I felt something like a flashbang to my senses; my sight went entirely white, my hearing went haywire and I struggled to feel anything. My body started to panic as my mind raced to process just what the hell happened, it felt very warm and my heart rate picked up like I was trying to wake up from a nightmare.

"…we have to do SOMETHING!"

That faint familiar line started to calm me down, at the very least proving I wasn't dying or something.

"What do you propose we do?"

"I…I dunno!"

My sight started to come back as the ringing in my ears subsided.

"Ah, you're awake."

"Hey there!"

I wasn't sure what was going on, so I played along and gave a smile.

"There's a better place to take a nap than the ground you know. Give me your hand."

For a second, I hesitated. If I saw the Mark of Grima on my hand, I was going to-thank God, there wasn't. I'm glad I avoided the whole "guy gets sucked into Awakening" story. When I got pulled up, though…

"The summoning worked!"

My heart dropped. I looked back and saw the gate from the game right behind me. By instinct, I leapt at the thing like I thought I could run from this. Unfortunately, the gate was inactive, so I just ran right through the empty opening. When I looked back, I actually saw Chrom and Lissa, with Commander Anna fast approaching.

"Is he okay? What did you two say to him!?" Anna demanded.

"All I said was that the summoning worked!" Lissa said, looking upset that I reacted so poorly.

"Maybe next time tell him everything is okay before blurting that out. There are thousands of parallel tacticians that would probably do the same thing he did if you gave them the idea they got sucked in here against their will!" Anna informed her.

"Oh…I'm sorry, Bran!" Lissa said to me. I don't know how I didn't mention this earlier, but my name is Brandon. Goes to show my attention to detail, huh? Anyway, I simply waved back, one hand behind my head in complete confusion.

"Brandon, come here. I'll explain everything!" Anna called to me. I came closer as she led me away from the portal. "Okay, obviously, you're with us in Zenith now. Across every person that's been… 'playing the game' we had one set of Zenith and Embla chosen to allow its player to come in here. I know you've got a lot of questions about how it was possible, but it'd be too much to take in right now. If you're worried about your world, don't be. Time should have paused back there, so you can spend as much time as you like here, no Stamina meter to worry about." She gave a wink to me, to which I responded with the same very placid look I gave Lissa. "Right, there's a time and place for everything…"

"Don't turn into Oak…" I couldn't help but say right back. I managed to make her giggle with that.

"So he does speak! Much better than the silent treatment behind your screen…although that's probably not your fault." Anna replied.

"So, let me get this straight…this world actually exists somewhere out there, and yet you know this is also a game." I said to her.

"Pretty much! We contact people of your world through a game, they help us whip that Emblian princess into shape!" Anna said with her signature smiling, finger-on-chin pose. "Like I said, if you want to go over the details, that'll be for later."

Anna led me along the tour of the castle, while I noticed Lissa trailing us…


End file.
